Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

plum pudding

 
Dictionary: plum pudding
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Dictionary

n.
A rich boiled or steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, currants, citron, and spices.


Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Food Lover's Companion: plum pudding
Top
Home > Library > Food & Cooking > Food Lover's Companion

The name of this specialty comes from the fact that it originally contained plums, which it no longer does. Instead, this traditional Christmas dessert is made with suet, dried currants, raisins, almonds and spices. It's either steamed or boiled and is often served warm, flamed with brandy or rum, and accompanied by hard sauce.

WordNet: plum pudding
Top
Home > Library > Literature & Language > WordNet
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a rich steamed or boiled cake-like pudding
  Synonym: Christmas pudding

Wikipedia: Christmas pudding
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
For the atomic model, see Plum pudding model.
Christmas puddings are often dried out on hooks for weeks prior to serving in order to enhance the flavour. This pudding has been prepared with a traditional cloth rather than a basin.

Christmas pudding is the dessert traditionally served on Christmas day. It has its origins in England, and is sometimes known as plum pudding, though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving a lot of dried fruit.

Contents

History

Question book-new.svg
 This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2008)

Recipes for plum puddings appear mainly, if not entirely, in the seventeenth century and later. Their possible ancestors include savory puddings such as those in Harleian MS 279, crustades,[1] malaches whyte,[2] creme boiled (a kind of stirred custard), and sippets. Various ingredients and methods of these older recipes appear in early plum puddings.

Features of these recipes were combined or remixed in ways that could have yielded plum pudding recipes. For example, combining the stirred custard with sippets makes it into a fool, a contemporary of early plum puddings which is very similar to a pudding. Some early custard tarts, such as the crustade lumbard in Harleian MS 279, are only unlike plum puddings in that they are held together by a pastry crust and not by crumbs or meal. Malaches whyte, another kind of pastry, have a filling of eggs, bread crumbs, and butter, but no plums. So a fully developed plum pudding recipe could be derived from the above list of possible ancestors by some recombination. This is not to say that there were not other ancestors, only that there need not have been any.

Although it took its final form in Victorian England, the pudding's origins can be traced back to the 1420s, to two sources. It emerged not as a confection or a dessert at all, but as a way of preserving meat at the end of the season. Because of shortages of fodder, all surplus livestock were slaughtered in the autumn. The meat was then kept in a pastry case along with dried fruits acting as a preservative. The resultant large "mince pies" could then be used to feed hosts of people, particularly at the festive season. The chief ancestor of the modern pudding, however, was the pottage, a meat and vegetable concoction originating in Roman times. This was prepared in a large cauldron, the ingredients being slow cooked, with dried fruits, sugar and spices added.

The earliest reference to the "standing pottage" dates to 1420s,[citation needed] a dish of preserved veal, mutton or chicken, thickened with bread, reddened with sandalwood[citation needed] and full of currants[citation needed]. By the time of Elizabeth I, prunes were added to this basic concoction. This became so popular that the dish was known from this point forward as Plum Pottage.

By the eighteenth century, as techniques for meat preserving improved, the savoury element of both the mince pie and the plum pottage diminished as the sweet content increased. The mince pie kept its name though the pottage was increasingly referred to as plum pudding. Although the latter was always a celebratory dish it was originally eaten at the Harvest Festival, not Christmas. It is not until the 1830s that the cannon-ball of flour, fruits, suet, sugar and spices, all topped with holly, makes a definite appearance, more and more associated with Christmas. It appears that Eliza Acton was the first to refer to it as "Christmas Pudding" in her cookbook.

Basics

Many households have their own recipe for Christmas pudding; those that command the most pride have been handed down the family for generations. Essentially the recipe brings together what traditionally were expensive or luxurious ingredients - notably the sweet spices that are so important in developing its distinctive rich aroma.

Christmas pudding is a steamed pudding, heavy with dried fruit and nuts, and usually made with suet. It is very dark in appearance - effectively black - as a result of the dark sugars and black treacle in most recipes, and its long cooking time. The mixture can be moistened with the juice of citrus fruits, brandy and other alcohol (some recipes call for dark beers such as mild, stout or porter). In Peru, some families use Pisco.

Traditionally, Christmas puddings were boiled in a pudding cloth, and they are often represented as round, but at least since the beginning of the twentieth century they have usually been prepared in basins.

Initial cooking is usually done on Stir-up Sunday and involves steaming for many hours (the period can be shortened without loss of quality by using a pressure cooker). To serve, the pudding is reheated by steaming once more, and dressed with warm brandy which is set alight. The pudding is traditionally topped off with a sprig of holly.

The wish and other traditions

Traditionally, every member of the household stirs the pudding, while making a wish.
This Christmas pudding is decorated with skimmia rather than holly.

Traditionally puddings were made on or immediately after the Sunday "next before Advent", i.e. four to five weeks before Christmas. The Collect for that Sunday in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, as it was used from the sixteenth century (and still is in traditional churches), reads:

"Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen"

The day became known as "Stir-up Sunday". Traditionally everyone in the household, or at least every child, gave the mixture a stir, and made a wish while doing so.

A traditional bag-boiled Christmas Pudding still showing the "skin".

It was common practice to include small silver coins in the pudding mixture, which could be kept by the person whose serving included them. The usual choice was a silver 3d piece, or a sixpence. The coin was believed to bring wealth in the coming year. However this practice fell away once real silver coins were not available, as it was believed that alloy coins would taint the pudding.

Other tokens are also known to have been included, such as a tiny wishbone (to bring good luck), a silver thimble (for thrift), or an anchor (to symbolise safe harbour).

A Christmas Pudding being flamed after brandy has been poured over it.

Once turned out of its basin, the Christmas pudding is traditionally decorated with a spray of holly, and it may be doused in brandy, flamed (or 'fired'), and brought to the table ceremoniously - where it may be greeted with a round of applause. In some houses the lights are turned out as the pudding is brought in amid a halo of purple brandy flames (this is related to the Christmas tradition of snap-dragons). It can be eaten with hard sauce, brandy butter, rum butter, cream, lemon cream, or custard and is often sprinkled with caster sugar (the fall of the sugar on triangular slices resembling the fall of snow on a pitched roof, or snowy mountain tops).

After Christmas

Christmas puddings have very good keeping properties and many families keep one back from Christmas to be eaten at another celebration later in the year, often at Easter. Some[citation needed] take the practice so far as to make each year's pudding the previous Christmas.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Medieval Recipe Translations: Crustade". James L. Matterer. http://www.godecookery.com/mtrans/mtrans25.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-23. 
  2. ^ Hieatt, Constance; Sharon Butler (1985). Curye on Inglysch. Early English Text Society. p. 133. ISBN 0-19-722409-1. 

External links

Search Wikibooks Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on


v • d • e
Christmas
Main Christmas tree
Christianity
Folklore
Traditions
Media
Society
Literature
Films

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Food Lover's Companion. Food Lover's Companion. Copyright © 2001 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Christmas pudding".  Read more